Wednesday, May 4, 2016

#NASLMAP - Indy Eleven Takes Lead from Minnesota! Update - 5/4/2016

There were several pitched battles in North America since our last update, some winners some losers and some new territories gained for the NASL. Minnesota United gained and lost to remain the same on seven states, but Indy Eleven were the biggest movers with two states stolen and one invasion into the unclaimed state of Kansas.

To give you an idea of how easy it can be to topple a state, Indy Eleven took Kansas with only one tweet, they were the only team tweeted about there, probably by virtue of someone on the BYB Road Trip. Indy Eleven also drove out Minnesota United from Missouri and stole South Carolina from the struggling militia of the Tampa Bay Rowdies!

Despite their defeat in Missouri, Minnesota United did manage to gain ground in Kentucky of all places which they stole from the new guys Rayo OKC. Rayo's forces diminished into the west and now remain scattered between Oklahoma and Colorado.

Indy were not the only team to gain good ground, Carolina Railhawks, despite losing for the first time this year to New York Cosmos gained two states. Arkansas is no longer in the Soccer wilderness, and was claimed once again by virtue of one single tweet. The real war was waged in Pennsylvania though where the Railhawks ousted the Jacksonville army and sent them packing.

We still don't understand how Jacksonville Armada have any states, but we suspect looking at the smallest dot on the map that their holding of DC might be helping them with government assistance, or possibly government cheese. They are holding on to Tennessee with one single tweet and for some reason Iowa remains their stronghold for now?

The biggest battle of the week took place in Canada. Not since 1775 has Quebec seen such a bloody fight. Like Benedict Arnold before him, Alessandro Nesta and his marauding Miami forces were sent home by sea to Connecticut by General Paul Dalglish and all of his Fury. Ottawa defeated Miami on the pitch and on the map in the same week.Ottawa Fury gain one territory and now hold their home province and Quebec while Miami FC are reduced to Connecticut and their headquarters in California where they are plotting with the San Francisco Deltas to bring even more ludicrous shirt designs to the NASL in the future.

FC Edmonton remain the same, they hold onto Alberta and British Columbia, which is hardly surprising as nobody else really wants to go there only about 100 people have phones. The Eddies see some action in midweek as they head south to Jacksonville, maybe we'll see some movement from them next week. I challenge an Eddie to hitch up the dogs and take a sled to the Northwest Territories and tweet something.

Don't forget about poor Fort Lauderdale Strikers, bottom of the league but at least they have a home somewhere, they are hiding out in Nevada where their owners are busy on the slots to try and raise money for their marketing department so they can attract more supporters to the games!

Although Puerto Rico FC have not yet played a game, they are holding their own in the Caribbean thanks to three tweets which we think were from Pedro Mendes, his brother Paulo and Carmelo Anthony!

There is still a lot of unclaimed territory in the USA and in Canada, call your friends, go on a trip, steal some land, find out why nobody likes Soccer in Montana! You folks in Canada send a pigeon to the Eskimos, take those hard to reach places and maybe even try and plant a flag in Alaska, we thought people in Edmonton went there to trade animal skins for chocolate and Russian Levis jeans?

The teams who are holding their own states or provinces and their current tweet values.

The #NASLmap is based on the game of RISK and of course is supposed to be fun. It is based on real data mined from twitter and is not made up. @Soccerbits built his own analysis software to collect, store and anaylze data from the beginning of each NASL season based on tweets made using the twitter handles and popular hash tags of of each team. Tweets from the league and teams themselves are not used.

Only tweets with location enabled are counted, only one tweet per single user per location are counted. If you want to play along and have fun just tweet about your team, if you are going on a trip see if your tweet can help win a state and also you can use the hash tag #NASLMap and show us where you are in the world. Please feel free to ask any questions about the data gathering or the map itself and follow @Soccerbits and @Bloody_Shambles on Twitter.